GAP 2011. GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany – Aksel Lund Svindal was on a mission to defend his world championship super-combined title and he did exactly that … in a big way.

After skiing off-course in last week’s championship super G in Garmisch, then crash-landing to fifth place in Saturday’s downhill, the Norwegian started his day Monday by blazing down the Kandahar more than a second faster than everyone besides Switzerland’s Beat Feuz (0.63 seconds back) and then charged down the Gudiberg slalom course for a combined winning time of 2 minutes, 54.51 seconds.

“I crashed two days ago in the downhill and I wasn’t sure if I could ski after that. The knees were bothering me, but a lot of treatment up until the race and then I nailed it, so I’m definitely psyched,” Svindal said. “I wanted to show again that I could ski fast in downhill and I did. Then I managed to put together a slalom run, too, so I’m pretty excited.”

In another amazing – almost magical – display of consistent speed – both on the downhill course and again in the tight gates – Christof Innerhofer made sure that he would leave these championships with a medal of every color. He followed Svindal and Feuz in the downhill then, in spite of being a speed specialist and not having trained slalom in two weeks, threw down a very fast run on his coach’s slalom course, skiing to silver Monday, 1.01 seconds behind Svindal. To add even more sweetness to his final achievement, the Italian’s roommate and good friend Peter Fill, in spite of a big bobble at the bottom of the slalom course, came in 1.90 seconds back for the bronze. Both have only ever podiumed in super-combined races twice on the World Cup, and the last time for each was two years ago.

“After the gold medal I was so relaxed and I said, yeah, I have two chances more. I think that I must go really well in downhill when I want to make the medal, but in the downhill I was so tired after the middle, the last 100 meters I couldn’t stay in position. I said, ‘Hey Christof, how do you do the slalom when you’re so tired in the downhill?’ It’s crazy,” Innerhofer said, adding that before Monday, he had “a bad feeling” all season on his slalom skis. “I had not [done] slalom for two weeks. So I said ‘yeah, you come here, you don’t know how you ski,’ this is better than skiing with a bad feeling. And for Peter, yeah, I’m so happy for him. We’re in the room together and he’s great people. It is just unbelievable.”

Innerhofer and Fill stood on their podium steps coordinating arm motions to incite a wave in the crowd. Fill said winning the bronze medal – the second of his career after his silver in the 2009 super G – was especially dear after having a less-than-ideal season with no podiums on the World Cup and with his father very ill in the hospital.

“My father is now in the hospital two months, it was a hard time for me, now I hope it’s going better for him. It was not an easy season. Now I think it’s in the right place –the podium,” said Fill, adding that he would leave Tuesday to visit his father and share his good news in person. “I hope it’s going better now and I hope to share this happiness with him.”

There was no question that Svindal dominated the day, holding strong while several top contenders were summarily eliminated.

World Cup overall and super-combined leader Ivica Kostelic and Switzerland’s Carlo Janka eliminated themselves before the race even started. After winning bronze in last week’s super G, Kostelic opted out of the rest of the championships in order to stay healthy and strong for the remainder of the World Cup season and Janka opted out in order to focus his health and energy on Friday’s giant slalom.

Romed Baumann was one of seven racers to ski off-course in the downhill portion of Monday’s race, which saw a rather slim start list of only 41 athletes, and six more straddled gates or crashed in the slalom run.

Bode Miller, who was in 10th place and more than two seconds behind going into the slalom run, got in the back seat carving before the second gate, popping his skis into the air and himself onto his back. In sixth place after the downhill and blazing down the slalom course in the lead, Switzerland’s Sylvan Zurbriggen straddled a gate after the halfway point and Feuz, who has never finished better than 10th in a top level race, was on his way to a medal-winning run when he met with the same fate.

Benjamin Raich was the fourth-place finisher on Monday, 2.17 seconds behind Svindal’s winning time and The Czech Republic’s Ondrej Bank was fifth, 2.39 seconds back. Racing in his first world championship event, another Italian, Paolo Pangrazzi, posted the top result of his racing career in sixth, 2.84 seconds back and Norway's Lars Elton Myhre, the fastest guy on the slalom course Monday (54.11) was seventh, 2.99 seconds behind. Croatia’s Natko Zrnic-Dim ended up eighth, 3.20 seconds out. In spite of never having won World Cup points, Finland’s Andreas Romar was ninth, 3.54 seconds out and Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud 10th, 3.91 seconds out.

By Shauna Farnell
FISalpine.com
Monday 14 February 2011